openSUSE is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by SUSE and a number of other companies. After Novell acquired SUSE Linux in January 2004, Novell decided to release the SUSE Linux Professional product as a 100% open source project. In 2011 The Attachmate Group acquired Novell and split Novell and SUSE into two autonomous subsidiary companies. SUSE offers products and services around SUSE Linux Enterprise—their commercial offering that is based on openSUSE Linux.The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0, and as of March 13, 2013 the current stable release is openSUSE 12.3.